8 March 2022: Attorney Claims He Was Fired by Cuomo for Cooperating with State Investigators

Attorney says Cuomo adviser fired him for cooperating in probe

This report is a bit off-tangent for our main areas of interest in covering Andrew M. Cuomo's scandals, but is one we recommend clicking through to read the whole thing. Here's the introduction:

An attorney who worked for Andrew M. Cuomo's administration claims he was fired last year for his cooperation in a state attorney general's investigation that sustained multiple sexual harassment allegations against the former governor.

The 40-year-old attorney, Craig Herskowitz, worked at the U.S. Department of Justice before joining Cuomo's office in December 2019 as an assistant counsel.

In a notice of claim filed against the Executive Chamber in September, Herskowitz said that Beth Garvey, who had been Cuomo's top counsel and senior adviser, notified him on Aug. 12 that he was being terminated from his job after it was determined that remarks he had made nine days earlier to a 25-year-old female colleague constituted sexual harassment.

But in his claim, Herskowitz alleges his firing was payback for testimony he gave last April, when he met with investigators from the attorney general’s office and described a "toxic environment" in the Executive Chamber; he also corroborated statements by Charlotte Bennett, one of several female aides who had accused Cuomo of sexual harassment.

Garvey had assigned Paul Fishman, an executive counsel, to accompany Herskowitz during the interview. Herskowitz's claim alleges Fishman later informed Garvey of the substance of his testimony, and he was fired as part of a "disproportionate response ... in retaliation for his disloyalty."

It builds from there. The report goes on to make a point of juxtaposing the sexual harassment-related conduct over which Herskowitz' employment was terminated with the multiple incidents if sexual harassment involving Andrew M. Cuomo by his multiple alleged victims, which "did not reach the level of inappropriate behavior that Cuomo has acknowledged". We'd have to say that the phrase "toxic environment" only starts to cover the words needed to describe the climate of nastiness Andrew M. Cuomo cultivated within New York's executive chamber under his administration.